For large enterprises, the days of manually installing operating systems (OSes), applications, and patches are long gone. However, many enterprises have continued to subsist on multiple vendor specific tools or hands-on installation and management of servers, even as the data center has grown or become distributed to multiple locations. Server management platforms offer automated tools to free the skilled IT staff from these repetitive and error-prone tasks.
Server management tools provide a wide range of capabilities, including:
- Provisioning of server and installation of operating systems.
- Configuration of server hardware, network, and storage options.
- Application installation and configuration.
- Patch deployment and rollback.
By automating many of these tasks, the addition of new servers is simplified and the maintenance of existing servers becomes easier and less time consuming. By understanding the different options available for performing these tasks, IT staff can select the platform that best suits the needs of the data center.